from Heading North

 from Sunday Elegy,

                              – Heading North

Ensemble

This image has swamped my Facebook newsfeed today. Many people on my friends list, and others of notable celebrity, have adopted this symbol as a show of support for, and solidarity with, the people of Paris. I have postponed today’s Jackdaw post to join with them.

liberté  égalité  fraternité

Speedgull

How is this for a photobomb?

Time And The Swede

A while ago, on Facebook, I stumbled across this photograph of my old Swedish friend Agnetha Fältskog, taken from the first Abba Greatest Hits album of 1975. If you look closely, you will see that inserted into her hand is a copy of her last solo album, A, released in 2013. Both albums, both images, separated by thirty-eight years, stand, in a way, like chronological bookends of a linear journey. Of her linear journey, along that particular period of her life. In between, of course, much has changed. For better, or for worse. Such is life.

I like to think that the photoshopping artist, whoever he or she may be, has, like I, a penchant for both history and continuity, similarly casting an appreciative eye over the progressive journey, yet, also, being cut to the quick by the unstoppable, winnowing effect of time itself.

There is a song on Agnetha’s last album called I Was A Flower. I think some of the lines could also be addressed to Time itself:

I was a flower

Now look what you have done

You’ve made my colours fade

Too close to the sun

Once I was innocent

Beautiful, life had just begun

I was a flower

Now look what you have done

There are some other lines of this song that my daughter sings over and over, like kids do:

But now you walk right through me

Like I’m an empty ghost

Now, when I need you the most

My daughter: a young girl, blossoming and full of life, whiling away her time singing of empty ghosts.

Two chronological bookends of a linear journey, being winnowed along the way.

Damn you, Time. Damn you.

Manchester, From A Distance

In the distance, the city takes respite on the cusp of dusk. Her song falls short of earshot.

Reach Up And Scratch The Sky

 

 

photograph by Drou Petrides

A Lean Lunch

The soup is coming along nicely.

A Titan Toe Dip?

The Cassini Spacecraft took this image of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, showing sunlight glinting off its hydrocarbon seas.

How cool is it?

I think I may go for a dip the next time the kids are off school.

 

All Roads Lead To Rome, All Railway Lines To Manchester

A friend took this photograph of the sunset over Manchester from a railway bridge in Collyhurst. It’s a fantastic shot which I think deserves to be shared. Evening descending with an apocalyptic threat.

Photograph by Edy Ager

Blackpool

One last return to that coastal town, and the rain drove in from the Irish Sea, the October wind triumphing in gusts. Sheltered within our crawling car, we witnessed the season stamp its seal through a conquering night, barely held at bay by faltering, neon light. The streets were swept clear, the waves threatened to swamp.

We bid our farewell for the year. The dark rejoiced.